So much uke, so little time

A lot has happened since my last post. I went to the tournament. I didn't do self-defense because I ran out of time finding ukes, so I just did sparring and kata. I did my kata 2nd in the group, got 7.2's across the board. I ended up finishing 4th out of ten, and got a nice shiny yellow ribbon. Going so early and doing it a little fast were the only things I would change. The kid who won did it with the kata I am just learning now for green belt. And the 2nd and 3rd placers were Alfred kids who did heian ni-dan. Now, heian ni-dan is kinda my arch nemesis of katas. Because I learned it first at Alfred, I had to learn it a different way when I started karate at my current school. I like the way I do that kata now, as supposed to the Alfred way. The main difference is at the beginning steps and end blocks. The beginning of the alfred kata has a crossover step between the hammerfist block and reverse punch- it's just weird. I have trouble doing the kata because I tend to mash the two versions together, otherwise I might have done that kata instead. But I chose heian go-dan because I was more confident in that. Next year, I'll probably jump into the green to purple division and get slaughtered by guys doing brown belt level kata, so I plan to take my kata I'm learning now or another higher ranked one (ro hai dai, maybe) and plug away at it so I am at the very least competitive. Anyways, I did sparring and being that there were ten of us I thought they'd mash us all in together but they separated us by gender. So there were three of us. First match was a good one. I fought an orange from Alfred, and being they concentrate way more on sparring, I knew she'd be good. I barely lost. I might have won another time, so I'm not too concerned with that. It was a long match, and I had to fight right after that (great exercise for an asthmatic). So being winded, I got my ass kicked by a white belt and that was the end of that. I don't know much I could have done differently. I managed to score one really good point on the orange belt with a roundhouse kick (kicks aren't my forte) so I'm proud of that, but I wish I could have done better. Again, I plan on getting my ass kicked next year by soon-to-be brown belts. I find that the older I get, the less competitors there are to deal with. I guess it's hard to stay in karate as you get older. So, that was the tournament. Today, I had my aiki test, and yay I passed! *happy Josie dance* It's a very nice blue. It's not the bright smurf blue belt my friend and a karate sensei have, it's a blue-grey. I'm pretty happy with it, I feel like I earned it. I did a lot of improv on my test, which was fun. I'm glad I'm not as clueless as I used to be. Now, if I could just learn that karate kata...